Crochet Mario Blanket: The End Is Near

I'm sorry I haven't posted recently. It's my busy season and my crochet time has been limited, at best. I did not make my Christmas deadline. I made a few mistakes stitching together my squares, and had to frog the fuck out of this blanket several times already. Imagine having to rip out entire rows of squares because the stitches are uneven or mismatched? That's what comes when you stitch together squares when you're half asleep. Anyway, here are some of the pictures I've promised, along with my current progress. I will not say when this blanket will certainly be done because I don't want to jinx myself. Just know that I'm getting close.

So, I had all the horizontal lines done like you see above, but the vertical lines have not been stitched at all yet. This was Xmas Eve.

I started stitching, and this is what it looks like from behind. Not bad, huh? Pretty neat and tidy.

This is what the front looks like. See? Even with the thread color switches, you can't see the color of the thread I'm using to stitch this together, which means I wasted a whole lot of time switching from color to color. Since I started that way, I had to stay consistent. I also discovered another trick. I went out and bought 4 more needles. I have the different colors already assigned to a needle so I'm not changing out thread as needed. Duh!! Why didn't I do that to begin with?

Pardon the shitty image or the amateur special effects, but I took the pic hastily while it was spread out across my very mess bed so I had to try and crop out the laundry and junk all over my bed. But, this is what my blanket looks like right now. I have two vertical rows stitched already with 11 more to go, and maybe a finished crochet border along the outside in the denim color. Ugh. =(